Maria Todd Sole USA Appointee to Global Healthcare Travel Council Executive Board

DENVER - April 13, 2013 - PRLog -- The stated aims of the new Global Healthcare Travel Council are to provide leadership on global healthcare travel, shape the research agenda in health travel, set norms, standards and ethics, and to influence and guide policy on health travel, It also aims to provide support to countries in monitoring and assessing healthcare travel trends.

Membership of GHTC is open to national healthcare councils, associations, clusters and tourism boards who are interested in supporting the growth of healthcare travel.

Maria Todd, CEO and founder of The Mercury Healthcare Companies is also the executive director of The Healthcare Business Institute, a Colorado-based nonprofit educational and research foundation. It is under the auspices of the HBI that she will participate in the Council as its only appointee from the USA at that level.  There are a few other USA members at the Advisory Board level.

As a volunteer, Dr Todd is also active as a Board Member of Global Med Connections, a non-profit collaborative organization of the University of Colorado and the Health Administration Student Organization which focuses on global healthcare delivery issues in developed and developing nations. She is the founder and currently serves on many editorial and advisory boards of several industry trade journals and magazines.

There have been several attempts to create a representative non-profit body for the medical travel industry. If the GHTC is successful, it will fill a much needed gap in providing a voice for the sector and will have a significant role in driving standards of care for international patients.  

As Mercury Health Travel's CEO, Todd has many established and published medical tourism and health travel quality, safety, managed care, logistics, inspection and credentialing policies, procedures and customer service protocols she developed for the world's largest medical tourism provider network. Todd's unique background comes from a strong 30+ year experiential mixture of clinical work as a surgical nurse, managed care business development, clinical integration, healthcare quality and safety accreditation and disaster preparedness, health law, and health travel logistics and case management. She is willing to share these insights to add to the assets of the Council. She is also willing to commit the participation of thought leaders from the HBI and the Mercury Advisory Group global team of over 65 healthcare experts and consultants to further the mission of the Council in its education and capacity development objectives.  She is the author of 10 commercially-published trade books including three on medical tourism topics. She is a highly regarded keynote speaker on medical tourism business development and other healthcare administration and management topics at global health events and conferences.

These latest initiatives will raise questions about the future role of the US based Medical Tourism Association which has claimed to represent industry interests but has retained few members and supporters outside of the Americas, Many believe that its activities have divided rather than bring together the industry. Critics point to its focus on generating income for its founders and associates from conferences, consultancy, certification and marketing programs rather than on fulfilling the role of a representative trade association.

The Council is currently in discussion with a number of countries who have signed a Memorandum of Understanding and may contribute to the development of the Council’s constitution and structure. Croatia, U.A.E. Dubai, Estonia, Greece, India, Jordan, Nigeria, Panama, Poland, Senegal, Ukraine, USA, and Turkey were represented at the launch event in Monaco. Invitations to become a founding member have also be sent to organisations in Brazil, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Philippines,  Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Thailand.

Founding Chairman of GHTC will be Emin Cakmak, who is standing down from his position with the Turkish Healthcare Development Council. Yunus Gurkan will fulfil the role of Secretary General. The intention is that the leadership of the GHTC will rotate every year. The Council will elect the Chairman. The Executive Board will be composed of 12 council members from member countries.

Membership fees will fund the establishment of a head office; the GHTC will also seek to establish regional offices. The initial fee for funder members will be $5,000.